Community Hall of Dahei New Village / One University One Village

Text description provided by the architects. Dahei New Village is located in Xiyang Township, Jinning County, Kunming City, Yunnan Province in China. Most local villagers are Yi minority. The vernacular buildings there are mainly built by earth and some are in disrepair recently. One University One Village (1U1V) team has carried out a series of rammed earth building renovation projects and developed a set of innovative rammed earth building strategies which are well recognized to suit the local needs. Gongfang (community hall) is a multi-purpose activity hall that the villagers use to hold events such as weddings, funerals, and festivals. However, the former community hall was too old to use and has safety risks. 1U1V team obtained an agreement with the township government to rebuild it by using innovative anti-seismic rammed earth construction technology in order to provide a more safe, comfortable, functional, and artistic space for the villagers.

The newly designed community hall sits on the site of the former community hall is made up of. The building comprises the outdoor space, the hall, and the kitchen. Its circulation spaces and layouts are based on the villagers’ lifestyle and the design of the original community hall. The building walls are rammed with earth excavated on the site. In order to improve its seismic performance, the earth is appropriately mixed with sand and gravel according to soil particle size analysis. No chemical additives such as cement or other stabilizers were added to the wall. Therefore, the wall materials can be easily recycled or returned back to nature.

Due to the low viscosity of local raw earth, H-steel columns are used for the load-bearing structure. The frame structure is integrated with steel columns, concrete foundation, ground ring beam, and top ring beam to ensure the building’s seismic safety. The abovesaid innovative technology has been tested and verified by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute of Kunming University of Science and Technology and Terra Centre of 1U1V through many experiments and projects.

To meet the project requirements on span, daylighting, durability, and aesthetics, the roof truss adopts a bamboo steel structure. Raw earth and bamboo with lower embodied energy and carbon emission combined with passive designs such as natural daylighting and ventilation, and thermal mass wall, ensures a very low environmental load in the entire life cycle of the building.

The building is co-built by the 1U1V women’s construction team and the local villagers. The  “high-science, low-technology” strategy with the “local materials, local technology, local labor” principle is significant for improving the environmental, economic, and social sustainable development of the rural area.